First, the reality TV show guru Mark Burnett — the man who made Donald Trump a TV star and “you’re fired” a household catch-phrase, who changed the television landscape with “Survivor,” which just debuted its 27th season, and created the ever-popular “Shark Tank” and “The Voice” — is now taking on a project truly biblical in scale.

[…]

“The Bible is the foundation of this nation, of our laws, of our society,” Burnett said. “There wouldn’t have been the Declaration of Independence. President Obama swore his allegiance to all of us not on one Bible, on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Bible and Abraham Lincoln’s bible last month. It’s on our money: ‘In God We Trust.’”

Nope. It’s not a coincidence, and this is far from the first time the religious right has foisted this scary horror story on their gullible followers.

The Bible has affected the world for centuries in innumerable ways, including art, literature, philosophy, government, philanthropy, education, social justice and humanitarianism. One would think that a text of such significance would be taught regularly in schools. Not so. That is because of the “stumbling block” (the Bible again) that is posed by the powers that be in America.

It’s time to change that, for the sake of the nation’s children. It’s time to encourage, perhaps even mandate, the teaching of the Bible in public schools as a primary document of Western civilization.

We know firsthand of its educational value, having grown up in Europe—Mark in England, Roma in Ireland—where Bible teaching was viewed as foundational to a well-rounded education. Now that we are naturalized U.S. citizens, we want to encourage public schools in America to give young people the same opportunity.

This is one of the reasons we created “The Bible,” a 10-part miniseries premiering March 3 on the History Channel that dramatizes key stories from Scriptures. It will encourage audiences around the world to open or reopen Bibles to understand and enjoy these stories.

First, the reality TV show guru Mark Burnett — the man who made Donald Trump a TV star and “you’re fired” a household catch-phrase, who changed the television landscape with “Survivor,” which just debuted its 27th season, and created the ever-popular “Shark Tank” and “The Voice” — is now taking on a project truly biblical in scale.

“We believe the Bible,” Burnett said. “However, on this project, there’s only one way to approach this. You have to take the Bible as a fact.”

“We have run into people that have thought, believe it or not, that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife, or that Sodom and Gomorrah lived happily ever after,” Downey said. “And [we] thought, if nothing else, just to set the record straight.”

How they’re doing on that setting the record straight, from one reviewer:

In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, (yes, I know it’s the same scene I wrote about yesterday) when Lot confronts the mob clamoring to “know” his guests, he offers them his daughters instead saying “Let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them whatever you wish”; behavior which would not win him a Father of the Year award. I would say this sounds awful out of the context of the time, but I’m not sure it could ever sound good. The Bible (film) deals with this uncomfortable bit of scripture by leaving it out.butnotyet.com

Hey, I can’t help it if I’m a glass half full kind of guy. Actually, any hopes I had were dashed as soon as I saw that Rick Warren and Joel Osteen felt it was worthy of screening and study groups in their churches.butnotyet.com

How they’re doing on that setting the record straight, from one reviewer:

Reminds me of the much ballyhooed readings of the Constitution at the opening of the last session of Congress, when the GOP conveniently skipped over those portions that were a might disagreeable in the present, such as the 3/5th compromise.

I may be disremembering some of the plot points here, so anyone who may have watched the episode, feel free to correct me.

The moment of clarity for me came when they featured a segment with a rabbi who had invented a device that hooked up to Ipads, which would curve the sound so that the sound waves went to the viewer and not off to the sides.

It cost $1 to make and his start up was selling them for $12 through a bunch of places, and they had a letter of interest from a major pharmacy/ department store chain.

One of the plutocrats wanted to invest, but only if they could ship the whole operation over to China, where they could manufacture the things for four cents each.

The rabbi refused.

The shark bowed out. $11 profit on a $12 sale wasn’t enough for him; he needed to have the $11.96 profit.

No thanks, Mr. Burnett. I’m glad your made your millions off Donald Trump and Richard Hatch and all those other fucking nitwits — but if that’s the culture you’re peddling, I want nothing to do with it.

I can hardly believe the shit these people are pulling here. Seriously. WTF. How does something like this actually get produced without someone going, “Uh, wait a sec, folks…”

Yiou’re talking about the same “History” Channel that had devolved into shows about aliens, Hitler, conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theories about aliens and Hitler. Now they have shows about pawn shops and rednecks who live in the swamp.

That was inevitable, given that O’Reilly as a Catholic is part of a Christian branch that does not believe in biblical literalism.

I can’t find the segment on Youtube with O’Reilly interviewing the Bible series couple, but after that run in O’Reilly then, a week later, had to bring a popular fundamentalist preacher to chew over the problem of creationism:

I can’t find the segment on Youtube with O’Reilly interviewing the Bible series couple, but after that run in O’Reilly then, a week later, had to bring a popular fundamentalist preacher to chew over the problem of creationism:

[Embedded content]

Anyway, yes, the creators of The Bible are on a mission, clearly, and as part of that mission if they needed to they would cast Satan as an Obama look-a-like.

I don’t think it looks like Obama, IMO. My bigger issue is that they chose a black guy to play the Devil. That’s a Freudian slip the size of Noah’s Ark, especially given Burnett’s implied God-bothering and “We’re a Christian nation” horseshit.

EDIT: For the record, the zombie target dummy mentioned a few weeks back was absolutely modeled on Obama.

Talking snakes, burning bushes that also talk, people turned into pillars of salt, old men that live to be 900, people losing their strength because their hair has been cut, trumpets that blow down walls.

The actor looks similar to President Obama, though it is not a particularly close match.

But yes, putting the only dark skinned actor as “Satan” harkens back to the whole Noah story and the condemning of an entire race based on the belief that Africans are descended from the son of Noah who looked upon his father’s “nakedness”.

The actor looks similar to President Obama, though it is not a particularly close match.

But yes, putting the only dark skinned actor as “Satan” harkens back to the whole Noah story and the condemning of an entire race based on the belief that Africans are descended from the son of Noah who looked upon his father’s “nakedness”.

There’s some similarity, but I think that’s a happy accident for Burnett. The bolded part is spot-on, though. I will not be surprised in the slightest to find out that Burnett is a hardcore, Ken Ham, Earth-is-6000-year-old creationist.

Realistically, FD Republicans, there is no way to know what Frederick Douglass would think of today’s world because he is fucking dead. That is the nice thing about appropriating a dead guy’s image as a symbol for your own movement: he is not around to tell you that you are a giant jag-off.

Which brings us to this video where K. Carl Smith tells a roomful of patriots at a Tea Party boot camp what it means to be a Frederick Douglass Republican. As best we can tell, he simply appropriates the name Frederick Douglass, adds the word Republican to the end of it, inserts some blather about freedom and liberty, and presto! He has created a foolproof shibboleth to ward off the accusations of racism that dastardly liberals forever hurl at the Tea Party. Not required, obviously: a fact-based understanding of Frederick Douglass’s life and work.

K. Carl Smith, you fit in perfectly in the modern Republican Party. Not because of your politics, but because you are a two-bit huckster selling Rocco Farnsworth’s Amazing Phantasmagoric Race-Neutralizing Tonic to a bunch of rubes with the collective IQ of dryer lint. You’re a goddamn hero of capitalism.

Through most of time, history has existed largely as propaganda. The concept of accuracy and not immediately taking a side is a relative new and fragile thing. And through most of time, that propagandic history has been to use justify horrible stuff, to shield ignorant people from uncomfortable facts, and to manipulate folks.

The actual actor seems to look very little like like Pres. Obama. It’s the shade they darkened the skin and the lips to, the eyebrows, the painted on contouring, his longer hair hidden by a hoodie, etc. that’s achieved the effect:

The Viking show had much promise, but I think it’s got a fair amount of Christian proselytizing in it as well

It pretty much has to, since a show that makes good guys out of the people who raided and ransack monetarists is not going to be well received by those whose Christianity is more than vestigal. Even those who are religious and liberal hate that sort of thing.

I would have settled for a dark skinned Italian. I just can’t believe they went with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Not really surprising. Nothing seemed to make religious nuts teeth grind more than when that picture of hypothetical Jesus, based upon historical and scientific knowledge of the people of the region at the time, was made public. Hell, it still seems to irk them something fierce if you point out that he was likely a Jewish rabbi.

The original Jews were Arabs. They were likely much like Palestinians. Being an Arab does not denote religion. There are Christian Arabs. There are Muslim Arabs. There are Jewish Arabs. Jesus, if there was such a person, was not Irish.

The actual actor seems to look very little like like Pres. Obama. It’s the shade they darkened the skin and the lips to, the eyebrows, the painted on contouring, his longer hair hidden by a hoodie, etc. that’s achieved the effect:

I’d say to the “History” Channel, “shame on you!”, for buying Burnett’s BS series, putting it on-the-air, and History owner Hearst also buying a 50% stake in his production company, but after pretty much morphing themselves into the Aliens, Conspiracies, and Faux-Reality Channel over the past few years of so, I doubt they have any shame left.

The original Jews were Arabs. They were likely much like Palestinians. Being an Arab does not denote religion. There are Christian Arabs. There Muslim Arabs. There are Jewish Arabs. Jesus, if there was such a person, was not Irish.

No. Even if you discount that the original Israelites are best described as Caananite hill people, and only want to target the post-Bablyonian-capture “Judahites” who returned to build the “second temple”, what we’re discussing are segments of the larger Semitic speaking group. It’s a fine distinction, not unlike differentiating between different tribes of Eastern North American natives pre-Columbus.

This message is brought to you as a public service of your local society of pedants.

I’d say to the “History” Channel, “shame on you!”, for buying Burnett’s BS series, putting it on-the-air, and History owner Hearst also buying a 50% stake in his production company, but after pretty much morphing themselves into the Aliens, Conspiracies, and Faux-Reality Channel over the past few years of so, I doubt they have any shame left.

The “History” channel is just another one of the hundreds of garbage channels that Directv dumps into my house because it’s the only way I can get the five channels I do watch. At least they do allow me to block all the crap channels I don’t have any interest in, unlike my local cable provider.

No. Even if you discount that the original Israelites are best described as Caananite hill people, and only want to target the post-Bablyonian-capture “Judahites” who returned to build the “second temple”, what we’re discussing are segments of the larger Semitic speaking group. It’s a fine distinction, not unlike differentiating between different tribes of Eastern North American natives pre-Columbus.

This message is brought to you as a public service of your local society of pedants.

1. The usual suspects gloat about how Satan looks like Obama.
2. The usual suspects howl about how deranged liberals are for observing that Satan looks like Obama because that’s ridiculous and insane.
3. The usual suspects gloat about how sensitive liberals are about Satan looking like Obama, and how they don’t have a sense of humor.
4. The usual suspects will go back to their regular activities, like comparing Obama to Satan and citing scriptural proofs that Obama is the Antichrist.

Adam Baldwin, actor & brietbart columnist, seems to have both noticed & seems to think it’s win-win for his folks:

When noted RWNJs such as Beck and Baldwin noticed this and comment with approval, Burnett, History, and Hearst can’t just hand-wave it away to everyone else.

This was completely on purpose, red meat for the hardcore RRWNJs; they loves them some Biblical apocalypse and retribution stories, which is why, as moderatelyradicalliberal noted above from what they’ve seen of it, the more “liberal” parts of the Bible seem to have been left on the cutting room floor.

Meanwhile in the material word, geomagnetic storming is underway as Earth passes through the wake of the coronal mass ejection, and comet Pan-STARRS has a fragment coming out of the nucleus:spaceweather.com

I really hate the attempts to link the ideas of liberty with religious faith. Yeah totally explains why the Enlightenment came when people were using reason and not relying on religious faith alone to use logic and reasoning. Or why the most tyrannical societies have been ones that use a holy book as the rule of law.

Look at that consultant list and show this show wasn’t tailor-built for American Protestant social conservatives.

Also, bonus theocracy:

…before the series premiere, Downey and Burnett authored an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal arguing that Bible teaching should be mandatory in U.S. public schools because “(t)he foundations of knowledge of the ancient world — which informs the understanding of the modern world — are biblical in origin.”

Burnett says making The Bible allowed him to have a new relationship with his faith. Whereas he once found some spiritual rules “a bit threatening” he came to appreciate the text in a more profound way.

I guess he’s feeling more relaxed about the whole ‘false witness’ thing.

Look at that consultant list and show this show wasn’t tailor-built for American Protestant social conservatives.

Also, bonus theocracy:

These ignorant fucks. The knowledge from the ancient world long pre-dates the Bible and there were numerous ancient cultures developing and advancing with no need of any of the Abrahamic faiths, including even Western civilization. The ancient Greeks weren’t Christians. There was a whole lot of shit going on before Abraham and before Jesus that have informed the human race and modern world.

The Bible has affected the world for centuries in innumerable ways, including art, literature, philosophy, government, philanthropy, education, social justice and humanitarianism. One would think that a text of such significance would be taught regularly in schools. Not so. That is because of the “stumbling block” (the Bible again) that is posed by the powers that be in America.

It’s time to change that, for the sake of the nation’s children. It’s time to encourage, perhaps even mandate, the teaching of the Bible in public schools as a primary document of Western civilization.

These ignorant fucks. The knowledge from the ancient world long pre-dates the Bible and there were numerous ancient cultures developing and advancing with no need of any of the Abrahamic faiths, including even Western civilization. The ancient Greeks weren’t Christians. There was a whole lot of shit going on before Abraham and before Jesus that have informed the human race and modern world.

These people are so goddamned stupid. I just can’t with these fools.

And the ancient Greeks were building upon tech and ideas that came from the ancient Egyptians, at least a dozen Middle Eastern civilizations that had risen and fell, and possibly stuff from afar afield as India and China (and maybe places like the Sudan and Zimbabwe, for that matter). To say nothing of all the places that developed their own knowledge systems independent of the Mediterranean complex of interlinked societies.

Centering everything on the Bible is, well, a giant middle finger at the world. And also gross because the primacy of the Bible as the document is the end result of a lot of violence and exploitation. Ballsy missionaries leading by example are sort of the minority compared to conversion by sword and other coercive means.

Addendum: it occurs to me that the kind of “the Bible is all” statement is also a giant diss to the Jewish legal scholars, scientists, and philosophers that endeavored to make the materials of the Torah mess with the natural and social worlds of their eras.

And the ancient Greeks were building upon tech and ideas that came from the ancient Egyptians, at least a dozen Middle Eastern civilizations that had risen and fell, and possibly stuff from afar afield as India and China (and maybe places like the Sudan and Zimbabwe, for that matter). To say nothing of all the places that developed their own knowledge systems independent of the Mediterranean complex of interlinked societies.

Centering everything on the Bible is, well, a giant middle finger at the world. And also gross because the primacy of the Bible as the document is the end result of a lot of violence and exploitation. Ballsy missionaries leading by example are sort of the minority compared to conversion by sword and other coercive means.

Hell, even as recently as the 19th century, peaceful missionaries had a rather bad habit of going into the bush to preach to the “savages” and never coming back out.

Members of the earth’s earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.

According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians—the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government—were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization.

The problem was that the Sumerians, mostly accountants when they weren’t farmers, didn’t have any lawyers. Because they had no lawyers they didn’t have any patent law. Thus anybody could steal their creations with impunity.

The Bible has gotten some coverage - see Bill O’ for instance, as well as among various Bible-scholar bloggers, etc.

My feeling is that most Americans just don’t care, and probably couldn’t tell the difference between a fact-centered recounting of the past and plain old creative writing. Look at the other shows the History Channel has offered without a blink of the eye.

The Bible has gotten some coverage - see Bill O’ for instance, as well as among various Bible-scholar bloggers, etc.

My feeling is that most Americans just don’t care, and probably couldn’t tell the difference between a fact-centered recounting of the past and plain old creative writing. Look at the other shows the History Channel has offered without a blink of the eye.

Reportedly, when Jesus referenced the Holy Spirit as being like the wind, a huge gust of air blew across the entire crew for 20 seconds, which was filming the scene on a very still night in the Sahara desert.

It looks like they desaturated Satans face in post vs. the full-color production still we’ve all seen. It’s actually a pretty sloppy effect with the face black & white and the ears just outside the filter (so they’re brown):

An award-winning producer of hit television shows […], Mark Burnett has produced an epic, 10-hour miniseries with his wife, Roma Downey, featuring stories from the Bible from creation to Jesus.[…] Outreach Inc., the parent company of Outreach magazine, has produced a related campaign kit and other resources that churches can use to engage people in discussions about the Bible. Here, Burnett shares a personal, Holy Spirit experience, as told to Outreach magazine Senior Associate Editor Scott Marshall. […]

We’ve spent a lot of time in the South Pacific because of various shows we’ve made, and I had an experience in Fiji with Roma [Downey, Burnett’s wife and the star of the television series Touched by an Angel] that I knew was a genuine, physical experience with the Holy Spirit, for sure. It’s my own experience, and my own physiology told me this is real.

I was praying, and I felt that Jesus—not felt, I know—that Jesus was physically hugging me. I just know that to be true. Anybody could say, “Well, how did you know?” I don’t need to explain to people. It just happened. I just said, “OK. Wow.”

[…]

We’re reading the Bible, reading about the Bible, reading people’s opinions of the Bible and editing this visual piece of work, which is the best work of our careers. The responsibility is huge. I think we’re really good at our jobs. Right now, four nights out of seven, we have No. 1 shows on television as a family. We know what we’re doing. Our responsibility is we better be at the best level of our game on this project. This is the Bible. If nothing else, for the rest of our lives, we ever make, this better be good. And I think we’ve done a great job with this.

If the challenges inside the temple where the Holy Grail resided in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were real, I’d love for Burnett, Downey, Beck, Baldwin, and a lot of these RRWNJs to make a run through them.

If the challenges inside the temple where the Holy Grail resided in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were real, I’d love for Burnett, Downey, Beck, Baldwin, and a lot of these RRWNJs to make a run through them.

Somehow, I doubt they’d make it through in one piece.

Heh I was just talking about that scene tonight with my brother. That scene with Donovan, man still freaks me out after all these years!

And yet here is a guy who wants to take credit for being the most successful reality TV producer. Like, that’s something which makes him an expert on anything but serving up the cheapest form of mindless entertainment.

Perhaps a higher power helped Mark Burnett on the set of The Bible, History’s miniseries that set a cable record of 13.1 million viewers for last Sunday’s premiere.

“I really believe what I’m going to tell you right now,” Burnett told Entertainment Weekly.“The hand of God was on this…. the edit came together perfectly, the actors came together perfectly, it just comes to life.”

Burnett also noted some bizarre occurrences while filiming such as high speed winds exactly when Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit is like the wind.” Burnett also told a story about how a small part of Jesus’s costume was lost in a reservoir, but that it was miraculously returned to them by someone from far away who didn’t know “why he should seek us, but he felt he had to return it.”

I had a Don’t Tread on Me bumper sticker in the back of my car. It was after an LGF thread here that I decided to remove it. Saw that the Council of Conservative Citizen was selling it as a hate statement. It had meaning once. Some of which I can still feel. But it has lost its historical meaning. Don’t Tread on Me does not mean hate the president.

Ha, it’s just insane that people have gotten more for drug possession than the Steubenville kids got. It really makes me cynical about our CJ system. Not that I am not already cynical as a DP opponent.

Between the majority of the sentence, and the fact that judge spent time lecturing about alcohol and social media recordings rather than not raping a passed-out drunk girl, I can’t help but feeling that the bit about making them register as sex offenders was tacked on.

Between the majority of the sentence, and the fact that judge spent time lecturing about alcohol and social media recordings rather than not raping a passed-out drunk girl, I can’t help but feeling that the bit about making them register as sex offenders was tacked on.

If it weren’t for social media, those little fucks would have gotten away with it. Sure, it was social media with their own stupidity and the witnesses being a bunch of bastards, but it still helped to nail them.

If it weren’t for social media, those little fucks would have gotten away with it. Sure, it was social media with their own stupidity and the witnesses being a bunch of bastards, but it still helped to nail them.

And yet, we’re supposed to feel all broken up because their lives are “ruined,” because now they can’t play ball anymore and can’t be scouted for a big university on a full-ride scholarship. Worse, the town can’t have it’s championship win!

And yet, we’re supposed to feel all broken up because their lives are “ruined,” because now they can’t play ball anymore and can’t be scouted for a big university on a full-ride scholarship. Worse, the town can’t have it’s championship win!

///

Yeah I read about CNN bemoaning their lives being ruined. Yeah what about the girl’s whose life they ruined. Where’s the sympathy for her? The actual victim in this case.

And yet, we’re supposed to feel all broken up because their lives are “ruined,” because now they can’t play ball anymore and can’t be scouted for a big university on a full-ride scholarship. Worse, the town can’t have it’s championship win!

Should piss off anybody with common decency. But all they can worry about is “These boys lives are ruined!”

It really does confuse the utter fuck out of me that they’re all broken up over these boys, yet the media had no problem swallowing up what Nifong was selling them about the Duke lacrosse team and begged for more.

I am a girl with beautiful name Julia, me 27 years. Dream to find the person for serious and long relations! I have interested your profile, since I seem that you search for such relations! Now I shall tell little about itself. I very cheerful and communicative, attractive girl. My growing forms 170 cm, my weight forms 57 kilograms. Much love to read the books, listen the classical music, walk on autumn wood and communicate with interesting people. If I have interested you, that anxiously waits your letter and photographies on my e-mail : naquivjor@yandex.ru With heat showers! Julia.

very charming! i love how her growing forms and her photographies. And how can you resist “with heat showers”? i’m in love!

oh oh oh oh i only wish that i could believe for a nanosecond that this is really a beautiful russian girl who likes me! o tempora! o mores! oh well, the romans weren’t the most honest people in the world either. where can a naive, star-struck, lonely romantic like me go for a life like in the hollywood movies…

in reality, i know how this works: pictures of luscious blondes, hot letters, pledges of love and a burning desire to come to the u.s. and be my bride, then requests for money wires to cover costs, bribes, sudden expensive needs and emergencies, delays, more requests for cash, & etc & etc

not unlike the spanish prisoner scam but your heart is more immediately involved

I am a girl with beautiful name Julia, me 27 years. Dream to find the person for serious and long relations! I have interested your profile, since I seem that you search for such relations! Now I shall tell little about itself. I very cheerful and communicative, attractive girl. My growing forms 170 cm, my weight forms 57 kilograms. Much love to read the books, listen the classical music, walk on autumn wood and communicate with interesting people. If I have interested you, that anxiously waits your letter and photographies on my e-mail : naquivjor@yandex.ru With heat showers! Julia.

very charming! i love how her growing forms and her photographies. And how can you resist “with heat showers”? i’m in love!

oh oh oh oh i only wish that i could believe for a nanosecond that this is really a beautiful russian girl who likes me! o tempora! o mores! oh well, the romans weren’t the most honest people in the world either. where can a naive, star-struck, lonely romantic like me go for a life like in the hollywood movies…

Hot showers with Russian girls!

So I had just gotten a Cyrillic keyboard installed and wanted to try it out, so I even replied to one of these mysterious Svetlana letters. After about three replies, she was already making plans to come and visit me!
But she did not ask for money or anything, which I had sort of expected.

Then I just googled “russian women scams” and found a US State Department link that describes a sucker play in which she ostensiblz pays for her own ticket, you go down to the airport to meet her, but she does not show up.

Then you get a desperate mail saying that she was not allowed entry unless she could show that she had $1,000 in cash, if you could just wire it to her, whe will give it back to you as soon as she gets through Customs and Immigration…

True Believers™ find all sorts of causalities among coincidences. Plane crashes, killing almost everyone aboard. Survivor praises God for saving his life: it was a miracle! (So, why did all those other poor souls perish,eh?) Actor mentions something about wind, and the wind blows for 20 whole seconds! Miracle!

And what if someone on the crew let loose a fart at the exact same time? Would that also be a harbinger of the Holy Spirit?

This is a comercially produced TV series for a channel that has as much to do with “history” as most reality shows have to do with reality.

And the modern “Biblical” approach to anything from politics to lawmaking, economics or history itself is not about reading or studying the Bible and Biblical scholarhip, coming to conclusions about what it might mean. It is about finding a passage in the Bible which, when re-interpreted or taken out of context, supports one’s pre-established point of view.

Roma Downey is giving the US advice on schooling based on Ireland? (Specially, Northern Ireland in her context). She comes from an education system where I’m sure the Bible is taught, to Catholics and Protestants kept separately. You can imagine what this has to done to encourage relationships between the community.

Also am wondering which part of the Bible inspired her to support Martin McGuinness, a once senior figure in the IRA, as Irish president (a ceremonial position).

Ah well, “Touched by the Angel” is still the best unintentional comedy on TV and you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at Downey’s mawkish wailings (give me “Highway to Heaven” any day).

Roma Downey is giving the US advice on schooling based on Ireland? (Specially, Northern Ireland in her context). She comes from an education system where I’m sure the Bible is taught, to Catholics and Protestants kept separately. You can imagine what this has to done to encourage relationships between the community.

Also am wondering which part of the Bible inspired her to support Martin McGuinness, a once senior figure in the IRA, as Irish president (a ceremonial position).

Ah well, “Touched by the Angel” is still the best unintentional comedy on TV and you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at Downey’s mawkish wailings (give me “Highway to Heaven” any day).

This casting is only ‘sort of bad’. Really bad, terrible, would be the day RWNJs ever figured out that Pres. Obama is never, ever, going to run for office again. They are keeping the Dems angry enough to really help Hillary.

Except that it was entirely necessary. The gibbering idiots at the GOP’s base want everyone else offended by their ideas. It’s the only way to keep the RINOs and libruls out.

they insist on establishing and maintaining a high level of ideological purity. they are not about to be diplomatic or accomodating to anyone, especially anone who does not live up to their exacting standards.

“Researchers found that during the first four years, users steadily limited what personal data was visible to strangers within their school network. Yet through changes Facebook introduced to its platform in 2009 and 2010, the social network actually succeeded in reversing some users’ inclination to avoid public disclosure of their data.

In fact, the social network’s new policies were not only able to partly override an active desire not to post personal details publicly, but they have so far kept such disclosures from sinking back to their lower levels, according to the study. They also found that even as people sought to limit what strangers could learn about them from their Facebook profiles, they actually increased what information they shared with their friends.

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has famously said that privacy is no longer a social norm. He’s worked mightily to make those words self-fulfilling, and in tandem with other technologies (smartphones) and social media (notably YouTube), Zuckerberg has succeeded.

Well, yeah, who doesn’t resent how Facebook has been data mining on everybody.

Then Frum adds:

The demise of privacy as a social norm is leading to the demise of privacy as a legal right. Scott Prouty likely won’t face legal sanctions for videotaping Romney.

Oh, nice one. As if Prouty could actually be convicted of a crime!

Frum tries to rationalize:

Mike Edmonson, spokesman for the Palm Beach County State Attorney, explains why not: “For the law to be broken, the person being taped must have a reasonable expectation of privacy.” Once upon a time, a speaker might have expected that an off-the-record, closed-door speech in a private home would be “private.” No longer. The less privacy we have, the less we have a legal right to — and the less we have a legal right to, the less we will have.

Yeah, sure.

It’s as if the problem with the election was Prouty, and not fundamentally what Romney said, which is what he and his listeners also happen to believe.

This casting is only ‘sort of bad’. Really bad, terrible, would be the day RWNJs ever figured out that Pres. Obama is never, ever, going to run for office again. They are keeping the Dems angry enough to really help Hillary whoever runs and wins for the Dems in 2016.

FTFY. I really don’t think it will be Hillary. Better chance for Warren/Baldwin than Hillary.

Zuckerberg and Facebook are a classic example of giving someone an inch and they’ll take a mile. There’s something wrong when the default is “share every damn thing” and it’s up to the user (many of whom are not the swiftest boats on the river) to decide how and what to share and with whom.

I would argue Frum’s point that privacy is dead. It may take some class action suit against Facebook to make its “privacy” settings really work, though. Zuckerberg is clearly in this for the money, user sentiments be damned.

A teenager who was shot and killed in Sterling, Virginia over the weekend may have accidentally entered the wrong home after a night of drinking.

Law enforcement officials told The Washington Post that the drunk teen had been dropped off by friends at a house just two doors down from where he lived. Both houses were two story, red brick homes and on the same side of the street.

The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office refused to release the names of anyone involved, and only described the shooting as an unknown intruder being killed by a homeowner.

According to the Post, law enforcement sources believed that the teen may have entered the home through a rear window and was not armed.

This is a comercially produced TV series for a channel that has as much to do with “history” as most reality shows have to do with reality.

And the modern “Biblical” approach to anything from politics to lawmaking, economics or history itself is not about reading or studying the Bible and Biblical scholarhip, coming to conclusions about what it might mean. It is about finding a passage in the Bible which, when re-interpreted or taken out of context, supports one’s pre-established point of view.

Well, for one it’s much easier and more convenient! And look how it fits all forums and types of investigative endeavor!
////

The document is a product of a group that doesn’t control the GOP, which won’t be listened to by the majority of GOP candidates, and said document is really more about “messaging” than actual policy changes.

The document is a product of a group that doesn’t control the GOP, which won’t be listened to by the majority of GOP candidates, and said document is really more about “messaging” than actual policy changes.

Maybe the GOP should try something like hiring people to actually live in communities, learn their issues, and help them deal with them by helping organize and represent them in their dealings with bureaucracies and other groups. Maybe they can give the position a straightforward title, something like “community activist”.

It is interesting how 99% of wingnuts seem to hold their opinions as a matter of personal identity rather than policy. A narcissistic narrative scaled up for a whole nation. Whatever the issue is, they always view it as being about Who We Are and What We Stand For. A narrative of personal identity that gets recounted by a group to itself. It’s meant as something to define you.

“I did not say any of that stupid shit on the Internet. George Washington said it.”—Thomas Jefferson.
“I did not say any of that stupid shit Thomas Jefferson says I did. It was Benjamin Franklin.”—George Washington.
“I did not say any of that stupid shit those douchebags Washington and Jefferson said I did.”—Benjamin Franklin.

“I did not say any of that stupid shit on the Internet. George Washington said it.”—Thomas Jefferson.
“I did not say any of that stupid shit Thomas Jefferson says I did. It was Benjamin Franklin.”—George Washington.
“I did not say any of that stupid shit those douchebags Washington and Jefferson said I did.”—Benjamin Franklin.

If you they’re pissed about being misquoted, just think how the Prophets must feel about “holy” books.

The document is a product of a group that doesn’t control the GOP, which won’t be listened to by the majority of GOP candidates, and said document is really more about “messaging” than actual policy changes.

The original Jews were Arabs. They were likely much like Palestinians. Being an Arab does not denote religion. There are Christian Arabs. There are Muslim Arabs. There are Jewish Arabs. Jesus, if there was such a person, was not Irish.

Meanwhile, our nearest genetic relatives in the non-Jewish world in Europe are Italians and other southern Europeans. In the Middle East it is the Palestinians, Druze and, to a lesser degree, Bedouins.

In other words, populations still around from the Hellenistic era and the Roman Empire.

“I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”
— Thomas Jefferson, #TGDN#TCOT#UCOT#PJMEDIA#WAR

“My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical.” — Jesus

And the ancient Greeks were building upon tech and ideas that came from the ancient Egyptians, at least a dozen Middle Eastern civilizations that had risen and fell, and possibly stuff from afar afield as India and China (and maybe places like the Sudan and Zimbabwe, for that matter). To say nothing of all the places that developed their own knowledge systems independent of the Mediterranean complex of interlinked societies.

Centering everything on the Bible is, well, a giant middle finger at the world. And also gross because the primacy of the Bible as the document is the end result of a lot of violence and exploitation. Ballsy missionaries leading by example are sort of the minority compared to conversion by sword and other coercive means.

Addendum: it occurs to me that the kind of “the Bible is all” statement is also a giant diss to the Jewish legal scholars, scientists, and philosophers that endeavored to make the materials of the Torah mess with the natural and social worlds of their eras.

During the enlightenment and the dawn of the industrial age people started to ask themselves how far humanity would have advanced if Alexander the Great had not died at a young age. He was planning to explore the Arabian peninsula and sail down the coast of east Africa and who knows how much earlier the America’s would have been discovered and how much earlier man would have landed on the moon, etc.

“There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory as it is—in our country particularly and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree—it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime—the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor his Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled.”

And given what the Church is doing, the prescription of “build a worldwide conspiracy to move the sick people around while doing nothing about the unacceptable, horrible behavior” is apparently the treatment.

“From my experience, pedophilia is actually an illness. It’s not a criminal condition, it’s an illness,” he said.

Napier said he knew of at least two priests who became pedophiles after they were abused as children.

“Now don’t tell me that those people are criminally responsible like somebody who chooses to do something like that. I don’t think you can really take the position and say that person deserves to be punished. He was himself damaged.”

Rep. Michele Bachmann delivered a typically incoherent speech at CPAC this year which revolved around the theme of caring; specifically, conservatives care and liberals do not.

To demonstrate her point, Bachmann claimed that people cared back in the 1950s, which was why Dr. Jonas Salk found a vaccine for polio and then gave it to President Eisenhower who, because he also cared, then gave it to all Americans.

Contrast that to today when the nation is facing the costs associated with treating Alzheimer’s Disease when “a much smarter strategy would be to develop a cure. That’s caring!”

Yeah, no one is working on a cure or studying Alzheimer’s right now.
///

During the enlightenment and the dawn of the industrial age people started to ask themselves how far humanity would have advanced if Alexander the Great had not died at a young age. He was planning to explore the Arabian peninsula and sail down the coast of east Africa and who knows how much earlier the America’s would have been discovered and how much earlier man would have landed on the moon, etc.

During the enlightenment and the dawn of the industrial age people started to ask themselves how far humanity would have advanced if Alexander the Great had not died at a young age. He was planning to explore the Arabian peninsula and sail down the coast of east Africa and who knows how much earlier the America’s would have been discovered and how much earlier man would have landed on the moon, etc.

I think it’s more relevant to ask what would have happened if Rome had remained a Republic and hadn’t collapsed from internal and external stresses. Making Christianity the official religion was an attempt to recover some stability. Still…would Rome’s survival as a Hellenized republic have led to modernization? China maintained a vast and relatively stable Empire, rich in learning, philosophy and art, for centuries, yet never developed science and technology to the degree Europe did. The competition between the various European kingdoms eventually spurred a lot of scientific development.

If the GOP would just stop trying to stop minorities from voting, women from making medical choices and gays from marrying, outreach done.

Unfortunately, where the GOP once had good ideas about fiscal policy, they no longer have that either. I struggle to find ANYTHING the GOP has to offer the American public, even if they were to manage all that outreach.

There’s no place for liberals in Rep. Steve King’s America. King, an Iowa Republican who looks like Todd Akin on a bad hair day, is one of those conservatives who loves his country, but hates most of the people he has to share it with. At last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, King gave a speech that sounded like a bid to become the Michelle Bachmann of the 2016 presidential campaign — a right-wing crank longer on intolerance than facts.

First, King attacked a Democratic colleague for sullying a bill to extend educational opportunities to combat veterans by adding “women and minorities.”

Then, the congressman suggested that liberals who don’t share his view of American exceptionalism — which would certainly include the 53 percent who voted for Barack Obama — should either leave the country, or move to Detroit or Chicago.

“So that’s what I ask of all of you: join me in restoring the pillars of American exceptionalism,” he said. “And for those who think that the kind and gentle language of self-deportation is what cost the presidency, I would suggest to the leftists that have deconstructed the rule of law, America’s pillars of American exceptionalism, cities like Detroit and Chicago, either go live in those enclaves that you’ve constructed, or you go ahead and self-deport. We’ve got a country to restore together.”

Better example, where would we be today if the Roman Empire hadn’t fallen?

Am I the only one who has read Tonybee? It’s an actual thing regarding Alexander

Toynbee, Arnold J. “If Alexander the Great had Lived On”

Divergence: 323 BCE

What if: Alexander of Macedon listened to his physicians’ advice in 323 BCE, and later returned to the Mediterranean.

Summary: How Alexander made the Pheonicians his Navy, conquered Carthage, allied with Rome, conquered India and Ch’in and finally died in 287 BCE.
Comments: Synopsis in Alexander Demandt’s Ungeschehene Geschichte, q.v.
Published: In Some Problems in Greek History, Oxford University 1969.

The site currently offers over 20 courses, which take a couple of hours to complete. Right now, students can earn scholarship money by completing courses like, “Does Capitalism Hurt the Poor?” “Is the Second Amendment Worth Protecting?” and “Has Science Buried God?”

These days it seems that everyone is trying to re-evaluate the Iraq War… but the Economist, which I have often associated with a staidness normally associated with lengthy articles on economics, calls it bluntly:

By Katherine Timpf | Yale hosts workshop teaching sensitivity to bestiality | On Saturday afternoon, Yale hosted a “sensitivity training” in which students were asked to consider topics such as bestiality, incest, and accepting money for sex. During the workshop, entitled, “Sex: Am I Normal,” students anonymously asked and answered questions about sex using their cell phones,… Read More →

I think it’s more relevant to ask what would have happened if Rome had remained a Republic and hadn’t collapsed from internal and external stresses. Making Christianity the official religion was an attempt to recover some stability. Still…would Rome’s survival as a Hellenized republic have led to modernization? China maintained a vast and relatively stable Empire, rich in learning, philosophy and art, for centuries, yet never developed science and technology to the degree Europe did. The competition between the various European kingdoms eventually spurred a lot of scientific development.

If Rome remained a Republic we would not have had a Roman Empire. Christianity would have still happened even if there was not a Roman empire but it would be called something else - Christianity is pretty much Greek philosophy with eastern mysticism and resurrection/after life cult.

I wonder what these people would say about my senior thesis in undergrad, where I made a utilitarian case in favor of both outsourcing and offshoring of labor, and suggested that the US government didn’t need any additional regulations of either one.

So drastically shorter primary phase, much earlier nominating convention, many fewer debates. Aren’t all of Reince Priebus’s structural reforms basically aimed at dramatically reducing the time period in which the actual Republican party base is on display for the public at large?

“So that’s what I ask of all of you: join me in restoring the pillars of American exceptionalism,” he said. “And for those who think that the kind and gentle language of self-deportation is what cost the presidency, I would suggest to the leftists that have deconstructed the rule of law, America’s pillars of American exceptionalism, cities like Detroit and Chicago, either go live in those enclaves that you’ve constructed, or you go ahead and self-deport. We’ve got a country to restore together.”

These days it seems that everyone is trying to re-evaluate the Iraq War… but the Economist, which I have often associated with a staidness normally associated with lengthy articles on economics, calls it bluntly:

But the ugly face of beastiality has reared again, in the form of aptly-named anti-abortion terrorism advocate Neal Horsley. On the FOX News Radio program “The Alan Colmes Show,” Horsley apparently freely admitted to engaging in beastiality as a youngster.

“Is it true?” Colmes asked.

“Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I…”

AC: “You had sex with animals?”

NH: “Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule.”

I saw those things in Center City for years before I found what they actually were.

I just thought they were some sort of weird street art or advertising thing like the stickers that end up all over utility poles. Ended up one day chatting with the guy that directed the 2011 documentary about them and he mentioned that he and others were making a film about them.

His empire stayed united even when he was on campaigns so what he left in place did all the governing - mostly because Alexander continued local set ups as is.

They mostly stayed united because they were worried Alexander would come back and smash the fuck out of them, and because he left governor-generals in place. He didn’t really leave intact old power structures, especially in Persia, where he disrupted the bureacracy quite a lot. And the states he conquered weren’t really united— precisely because he did leave in place some, but not all, old power structures. That’s why, when he died, everything fell apart immediately. I’m not sure why you think that if he’d conquered more lands that would have changed. Can you explain?

The best ruler is one who does not rule.

That’s fatuous and really stupid, but at least it’s pithy.

What Alexander was shit at was setting up a secession because he thought he was immortal maybe.

He was shit at pretty much every aspect of governing. He was good at warfare. That’s all.

Also, I was commenting on thoughts of men from the era of the enlightenment and the dawn of the industrial age. Specifically Arnold J. Toynbee’s “If Alexander the Great had Lived On” thesis.

Sorry, I have the benefits of a classical education.

Yeah, I think Toynbee’s story is pretty silly, too. Also, Toynbee has Alexander returning to the Mediterranean, and gives credit for the actual reformation of this empire into a civilization to Alexander’s successor, not to Alexander himself. Remember?

By the way, the big deal you make about your education, about Americans being stupid, etc., it comes across as massively insecure— especially when combined with you typically massively overextending a hypothesis.

They mostly stayed united because they were worried Alexander would come back and smash the fuck out of them,

So they would have continued on being a united empire as long as Alexander had lived. And then we get Tonybee’s thesis of what the world would look like if Alexander lived until old age. And what happened after Alexander’s old age death would be different than the world around us today. Maybe more advanced? America’s discovery happened way earlier? Library of Alexandria still around? Steam power from Hero’s engine becomes a tool of empire? Etc. Tonybee’s work is out of print but there are lot’s of books that riff on the “What if” aspects of history. Check them out.

My education is American. I work and live for times in Europe. I had a 100% American public school education - graduated from CUNY - thank you taxpayers! America has not been right in the head since they voted Reagan in. Maybe they are sobering up these days.

So for the past few weeks the normally uber-masculine folks who are associated with the gun lobby and the other various tangential steel-phallus worshiping groups have all been very concerned with rape, or at least one very specific form of rape. NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre spoke at CPAC last week (because wherever there is an open mic LaPierre will find it through a process of passive osmosis) to once again tell the fervent crowd about how the industry that floods his 401k with blood money is literally the only force that is securing the existence of our people and a future for white women and children. Specifically, LaPierre was very concerned about the hordes of spree rapists lying in wait throughout this country and only being kept at bay by women empowered through the dependable panacea of a concealed handgun permits.

Now, many sentient people identified this latest act of trolling from the gun industry’s designated peep-show cumshield as an idiotic and patronizing shifting of responsibilities consistent with the frightfully insane hobbesian world of death that the NRA has always promoted. But since our wonderful news media still believes that empowering “both sides” of a debate outweighs the enabling of delusional asshats, this latest twist on the NRA’s myriad of masturbatory revenge fantasies is actually being taken seriously as part discussion on how to prevent rape. (Also this is a man speaking about the horrors of rape and not some overly emotional feminist-type so you know what LaPierre is saying is grounded in the truth.)

They mostly stayed united because they were worried Alexander would come back and smash the fuck out of them,

So they would have continued on being a united empire as long as Alexander had lived.

Yeah. Doesn’t make him a good governor, and doesn’t make the idea that he who governs least governs best (an ideal that the GOP and the Tea Party would embrace whole-heartedly, by the way) any less fatuous.

There was never any sign that Alexander was even capable of thinking about how to sinter together this disparate lands. That’s why Toynbee produces Alexander’s successor as a deus ex machina to solve the problem.

The GOP plan, authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), aims to reduce the top income tax rate to 25 percent and repeals many other taxes on the rich, including the Alternative Minimum Tax and increases included in Obamacare. Ryan wants to pay for the tax cut by closing loopholes and ending tax expenditures. The budget didn’t specify which loopholes and expenditures would be eliminated, but even if all of them that benefit the rich were done away with (except for preferences for capital gains and other investments, which Ryan has said he will keep), the budget would grant millionaires a tax cut in excess of $200,000. If it doesn’t eliminate loopholes, the tax cut would only grow larger, CTJ found:

No specification of what loopholes or expenditures would be cut means that it’s just meaningless bafflegab. More of the “we pick the cuts we like, and you have to choose the unpopular cuts to actually make it work” junk that Ryan has been peddling from the start.

Orthodox activists stormed Moscow’s Darwin Museum on Sunday, tossing leaflets with creationist slogans into the lobby and planting a “God Created the World!” flag on the roof.

The event, organized by the “God’s Will” movement, was apparently held to mark the passing of 7,522 years from the creation of the world. According to the group’s official website, the movement seeks “to fulfill the commandments of Christ through civil activism.”

One participant, Dmitry Tsorionov, said of the event on Twitter: “Check and mate, atheists! 7,522 summers from the creation of the world, creationists have seized the Darwin Museum!”

In a video posted on YouTube, activists can be seen in large groups singing hymns, wearing T-shirts denouncing the theory of evolution and proclaiming creationism, and throwing papers with religious slogans into the lobby — one of which read, “God created cats.”

[…]

Just days before that, an event in support of Pussy Riot at Teatr.doc was disrupted by Orthodox activists who stormed in with a TV crew filming as they denounced the theater event.

I think it was part of his overall thesis a short story to illustrate a point in a larger work.

And what thesis was that? It was an entertaining little essay but it wasn’t meant as some serious scholarship. And again, the basic problem I’m having with your rambling is that Alexander was total shit at governing, to the extent that even Toynbee doesn’t credit him for the eventual empire’s culture and civilization, but credits his successor.

Alexander is an interesting leader precisely because he was such a great war-leader but not in any other way actually a leader of his people. He didn’t do anything to advance humanity, and you haven’t explained at all how him staying alive would have helped humanity advance. If you care to actually support your thesis at any point, go ahead and do so.

This really should be grounds for immediate dismissal, particularly threatening to destroy gov’t records and resist federal authorities:

Weld County Sheriff John Cooke won’t enforce new state gun measures expected to be signed into law by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, arguing the proposed firearms restrictions give a “false sense of security.”

Lawmakers in Colorado on Friday approved a landmark expansion of background checks on firearm purchases. Earlier in the week, Colorado lawmakers approved a 15-round limit on ammunition magazines.

Both measures are awaiting the expected approval of the governor.

…

The sheriff told the news outlet that he and other county sheriffs “won’t bother enforcing” the laws because it won’t be possible to keep track of how gun owners are complying with the new requirements.

Cooke is joined in his opposition to the proposals by El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa, who told an angry packed crowd at a meeting on Thursday in Colorado Springs he would stand firm against the bills.

…

Maketa said his office keeps records of every concealed carry permit holder in the county as required by law, but he would never share it.

He said he would destroy the database if anyone tried to get their hands on it and would intervene if government agents started arresting county residents for exercising their constitutional rights.

And what thesis was that? It was an entertaining little essay but it wasn’t meant as some serious scholarship. And again, the basic problem I’m having with your rambling is that Alexander was total shit at governing, to the extent that even Toynbee doesn’t credit him for the eventual empire’s culture and civilization, but credits his successor.

Alexander is an interesting leader precisely because he was such a great war-leader but not in any other way actually a leader of his people. He didn’t do anything to advance humanity, and you haven’t explained at all how him staying alive would have helped humanity advance. If you care to actually support your thesis at any point, go ahead and do so.

The point of the exercise is that instead of the wars of the Diadochi that distracted the Hellenistic world after Alexander’s death, allowing Alexander to live would have allowed per Tonybee expand his empire and because he lived until 80 you would have had the Hellenistic world expand and China, etc and his successors would have continued the culture that gave the world the first global enlightenment safe from barbarian overthrow that gave us the dark ages.

You are such a pettifogger to argue over well know speculation about how much more advanced we would be if we never lost the civilization that gave us the library of Alexandria.

So to sum up Toynbee’s essay went something like this: Alexander lived to an old age and was thus able to consolidate his empire so it would not break down when he died. Later on the empire needed better communications because it was so huge and the Greeks did not use slave labor like the Romans did (borrowing the Persian model of paid labor) so some smart persons came upon the idea to combine Herons idea of a steam engine with the diolkos, a sort of railroad in stone used to drag ships over the Corintian isthmus. So soon trains, pulled by steam engines would traverse the whole realm of the Alexandrian empire.

As a footnote it is also told about a man sitting at the train station in Nasareth preaching his message, but people were so busy so noone had the time to listen though Tonybee missed out on that one in my opinion because if there was a train station that means we may have had the printing press by then and ideas would have spread far and wide faster and it would have been an empire that was tolerant of religions again borrowing Persian the model.